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qberttst: MAME ROM Information.

The object of the Q*bert game is to change the color of the top of the cubes to the Destination color indicated at the upper-left of the screen (below Player 1's score) by hopping onto them. When all the cubes in the pyramid have been changed to the destination color, the screen will advance to the next Round, with the player-controlled Q*bert character starting back on the top cube. At the beginning of each Level, there will be a short demonstration cycle with Q*bert hopping around four cubes to explain to the player the play action of each Level. Each Level consists of four Rounds. The current Level number and Round number is displayed at the upper-right of the screen (below Player 2's score in a 2-player game).

The game play starts with Q*bert appearing at the top of the pyramid. The joystick will move Q*bert from cube to cube by hopping in any of four diagonal directions. Q*bert can move anywhere on the pyramid, but jumping off will kill him. Hopping on the rotating disk will take Q*bert back to the top of the pyramid. In the first two Rounds of play, Q*bert will have to avoid touching the red and purple balls. These deadly objects drop randomly onto the second-from-the-top level and bounce downwards. The red balls will fall off the bottom but the purple ball will stop at the bottom and hatch into Coily, the snake which chases Q*bert. To destroy Coily, lure him to the edge, then jump unto a disk. The disk will take Q*bert back to the top and Coily will fall off, awarding 500 points and clearing the board of all other 'nasty' characters.

Starting at the 3rd Round of play, other 'nasty' characters come into play. The green characters or objects are safe to hop onto and will award points. All other 'nasty' characters are deadly to touch. In the third Round the red balls will stop falling, but two purple characters named Ugg and Wrong Way will appear at the lower portion of the pyramid and travel sideways and upwards (Ugg is the one with the snout moving from right to left on the right sides of the cubes, and Wrong Way is the one with the big eyes moving from left to right on the left sides of the cubes). They will not chase Q*bert, but will move randomly to get in Q*bert's way. In the third Round and every Round after, based on an internal timer, a green ball will appear and bounce down from the top of the pyramid. Hopping Q*bert onto the green ball will award 100 points, and freeze all the characters on the screen for a few seconds, but 'Q*bert' will still be able to move to complete the color changes.

During the 4th Round of play, 2 green characters named Slick and Sam will appear, based on the internal timer (Slick is the one wearing shades; Sam does not wear shades, otherwise their function is identical). They will drop onto the second level from the top and hop randomly downwards. If they hop onto a cube that Q*bert has already changed the color of, the cube will change to a different color, to thwart Q*Bert. Hopping Q*Bert onto Slick or Sam will stop them and award 300 points.

Throughout the remaining Rounds, all the characters and objects will appear in random combinations with increasing speed.

To add variety to the game, the disks will change positions every Round, and in the higher Levels the number of disks will change.

During Level 2, the play action will increase in difficulty from changing the cubes to one color, to changing the color of the cubes twice. This mean: that each cube would have to be hopped on twice to change the pyramid to the destination color, completing the Round.

Starting at Level 3 and for all remaining Rounds, and Levels, the play action will become more difficult. The object remains to change the cubes to the designated color, but if Q*Bert hops on any cube, that cube will change color. So even if the cube has already been changed to the Destination color, it will change again.

Here is a rundown of how all the colors change :

Legend :

S - Starting Color

I - Intermediate Color

D - Destination color

LEVEL 1 : When Q*bert jumps on S or I, it changes to D. When he jumps on D, it stays at D (NOTE : In Round 4, when Slick/Sam jumps on D, it changes to I).

LEVEL 2 : When Q*bert jumps on S, it changes to I. When he jumps on I, it changes to D. When he jumps on D, it stays at D.

LEVEL 3 : When Q*bert jumps on S, it changes to D. When he jumps on D, it changes back to S. Q*bert must start again.

LEVEL 4 : When Q*bert jumps on S, it changes to I. When he jumps on I, it changes to D. When he jumps on D, it changes back to I. Q*bert must start again.

LEVEL 5 : When Q*bert jumps on S, it changes to I. When he jumps on I, it changes to D. When he jumps on D, it changes back to S. Q*bert must start again.

LEVELS 6-9 : Same color pattern as Level 5. The difference is the increased speed of Q*bert and the 'nasty' characters.

There are also Bonus points awarded at the end of each Round for successfully completing the Round. The Bonus for the completion of the First Round is 1,000 points. This Bonus will progressively increase each Round by 250 points to a maximum of 5,000 points at Level 5.

- TECHNICAL -

Game ID : GV-103

Main CPU : I8086 (@ 5 Mhz)

Sound CPU : M6502 (@ 894.886 Khz)

Sound Chips : DAC, Votrax SC-01

Screen orientation : Vertical

Video resolution : 256 x 240 pixels

Screen refresh : 61.419025 Hz

Palette colors : 16

Players: 2

Control : 4-way joystick (diagonal)

- TRIVIA -

Released in October 1982.

Licensed to Konami for Japanese distribution (February 1983).

Inspired by artwork by M.C. Escher who was an artist that Jeff admired. Ron Waxman came up with the idea of Q*bert changing the color of the cubes. Q*bert's name originated by the combination of 'Cube' and 'Hubert', but the 'Cube-Bert' was changed to 'Q-bert' to make it more unique. The concept game was called 'Snots and Boogers' and then '@!#?@!' (which many of the programmers and Gottlieb VPs said would be impossible to get anyone to say) before the final version was called just 'Q*bert'. Slick and Sam were a play on the phrase 'spick and span' with Sam being named after co-worker Sam Russo. Rick Tighe came up with the idea of adding the pinball hardware which generated the very mechanical KA-CHUNK when Q*bert falls off the pyramid.

A Votrax SC-01 speech synthesis chip is used to generate the incoherent speech of Q*bert swearing, Slick and Sam (high pitch) and Wrong-way and Ugg (low pitch). The only true speech ever generated is Q*bert saying 'Hello, I'm turned on' when the game is first powered up and 'Bye Bye' after entering your initials at the end of a game.

Approximately 30,000 units were produced by Gottlieb.

Several early cabinets were produced with '@!#?@!' on the marquee.

Bob Gerhardt holds the official records for this game in 'Marathon' setting with 33,273,520 points on 11/28/1983.

Tom Gault holds the official records for this game in 'Tournament' setting with 1,895,565 points.

A slightly different version known as 'Mello Yello' was programmed for promotion of the Mellow-Yellow softdrink, but it was never released to the market.

As well as being a huge commercial success as a game, Q*bert also provided revenue from its many tie-in products. Toys, games, and other products bearing the hero’s likeness all sold well. There was even a Q*bert cartoon; Saturday Supercade was a CBS cartoon series which featured a number of different segments starring various video game characters. In addition to the characters from the game, the Q*Bert segment featured Q*tee (Q*bert's girlfriend), Q*bit (his little brother), and others.

Such was the character's popularity at this time that Gottlieb assigned pinball designer, John Trudeau ("Creature From the Black Lagoon", "Congo"), to devise a Q*bert pinball. It was called "Q*bert's Quest" and Trudeau created an innovative design pattern that should have sparked arcade goers to try it. Remarkably, the table was a commercial flop. Released in March 1983, a paltry 884 machines dribbled out of the plant and further convinced management that pinball was indeed experiencing desperate times.

A Q*bert unit appears in the 1983 movie 'Koyaanisqatsi - Life out of Balance'.

Parker Brothers released a boardgame based on this videogame (same name) in 1983 : Object of the game is to be one of the 'NOSER ELITE' by removing more pegs from the pyramid than your opponent (Peg plugged into cube = Starting color; Peg removed from cube = Destination color).

One player takes on the role of the hero, Q*bert, who must make his way around the pyramid trying to remove as many pegs as he can. A second player controls the 'nasty' characters out to thwart Q*bert.

- SCORING -

Changing a cube to the Intermediate color : 15 points.

Changing a cube to the Destination color : 25 points.

Catching the Green Ball : 100 points

Catching Slick/Sam : 300 points.

Luring Coily off pyramid : 500 points bonus.

Completing a round : 750 points + 250 points x round number.

End of round bonus : 50 points per teleport disc remaining.

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

* Control Panel Instructions :

Goal : Change the tops of all cubes to a new color by hopping onto them.

Joystick moves 'Q*bert' from cube to cube. Hopping onto a disk will take you back to the top.

All green objects are safe to hit. All other objects are deadly.

Destroy the snake by leading him to the edge, then jumping on a disk.

Stay on pyramid! Only jump off to use a disk.

* A big part of the game is waiting to see where 'nasty' characters are going to jump. You need to make sure you always time a jump at the same time the 'nasty' characters jump, so you can always have a clear path to a new square.

* Since the game only has 9 levels, if you can master level 9 then you should be able to play indefinitely since level 9 repeats once you reach it and the game doesn't get any harder.

- 21st January 2008: Mr. Do - I went back and revisited Q*Bert, as it's another of those that has bugged me for awhile; the colors were pretty off on the previous version. I found a real bezel and some good pics to compare too, so that I could fix the existing vector that is floating around; no gray, the same shade of each color throughout the whole bezel like it should be, and those black specks on Berty don't belong there (I'm guessing the original source was flaking a bit).

- 15th April 2001: Nicola Salmoria fixed an i8086 CPU core bug which broke the high score screen in Q*Bert.

- 0.37b7: Added samples (knocker.wav, fx_17a - fx_36.wav).

- 0.36b12: Andrea Mazzoleni added the possibility to use a multiple keys or joysticks sequence to drive a generic action. This can be handy with consoles or cabinets with a limited number of buttons, to reuse all buttons with only one extra button, like a shift key. For example the COIN1 action can be mapped to the "Player 1 Fire" plus the "Extra Shift Button". It can also be used to map Q*Bert movements to joystick diagonals (since the orginal used a joystick rotate 45 degrees).

- 0.36b2: Support for new samples in Q*Bert [Fabrice Frances]. Added samples (fx_17a-fx_36.wav and knocker.wav).

- 0.31: John Butler and Howie Cohen added back speech sample support to Q*Bert. The first time you play Q*Bert, the high scores are automatically initialized to the default. Note: your old high scores will be lost, sorry [Nicola Salmoria].

- 0.28: Fabrice Frances added *emulated* sound to Q*Bert, Reactor, Krull and Mad Planets. The samples are no longer needed and may be removed. Please do not complain because there is no speech in Q*Bert. We are aware of that. Added sound roms (qb-snd1.bin, qb-snd2.bin).

- 0.18: Fabrice Frances submitted a much faster version of the 8086 emulation. Q*Bert now runs at full speed with -frameskip 1 on my 486/100. Rotated the controls for Q*Bert [Nicola Salmoria]. Control: Arrows = Move around. To enter your name in the high score list, use 1 or 2.

- 0.17: Added Q*Bert (Gottlieb 1982) and clone 'Q*Bert Japanese'. Fabrice Frances submitted a massive contribution: An 8086 CPU emulator, and drivers for Q*Bert. They run quite slowly on my 486/100 (~25 fps) but are playable [Nicola Salmoria]. Q*Bert has sound too (with samples). Control: Arrows = Move around. Note: The Intel 8086 CPU emulator comes from David Hedley's IBM PC Emulator (pcemu), heavily modified in order to allow memory-mapped I/O and interfaced to MAME by Fabrice Frances. Fabrice Frances used his own 6502 emulator in order to compute the digital effects because the clock emulation is much more precise and allows to put timestamps on amplitude DAC writes. MAME doesn't allow to compute the digital effects in real time like Euphoric so the effects are provided as precomputed samples (some of them are quite big, he should convert them to 22kHz).

PLAY INSTRUCTIONS:

- Jump on squares to change them to the target color.

- Stay on playfield! Jumping off results in a fatal plumment unless a disk is there.